Re: #4 on ToDo list: make the top panel prettier

[Colin Walters <walters verbum org>]

2009/1/19 Brian Fleeger <brianfleeger yahoo com>:

> Regarding Gnome's poor use of vertical space, a lot could be saved if Gnome
> used the following pattern instead:
> http://www.flickr.com/photos/26671354 N05/3210742468/sizes/l/in/photostream/

That's quite interesting and looks compelling.  The global menu though
is a radical shift, one that as I understand it would require
modifications of most applications.  Now, one advantage Free Software
has over our competitors is that we *can* modify major applications;
but at the same time, avoiding backwards incompatible changes is very
important.

Even without the global menu component though, there are useful ideas
here that are straightforward to do.

> Note, using window picker can obviate the need of a bottom panel at all, be
> it AWN-style or traditional.  As for moving tabs to the window manager level
> -- I just don't know how difficult that would be for you programers to
> acheive, even if you wanted to.

I think it makes sense; in general I'd like the WM to be significantly
more pluggable/controllable by both applications and extensions than
it is now.

> I know this is usually a pretty quiet list-serve, so I don't want to clog
> your in-boxes!  Just had some ideas and wanted to put them out there...

Keep them coming, please!